Features
the namesake
T
he act of naming, a cultural tradition that exists almost universally, is one that is often explored as a dichotomy in literature. You may recall reading excerpts from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 10th grade English, or still get confused between the characters Macbeth and Macduff while taking Shakespeare I at Barnard. Either way, having read these texts or not, all of us have some sort of relationship to our names which is usually highly personal and sometimes conflicting with who we imagine ourselves to be. In her novel The Namesake, a coming-of-age story that recounts the encounter between a boy and his THE BULLETIN -
birth name, Jhumpa Lahiri engages with the struggle of a personal identity at odds with a hand-me-down name torn from a Russian book on the Ganguli family bookshelf. The Gangulis recently moved to Boston from Calcutta, India in pursuit of prestigious jobs at MIT. The couple impulsively decide upon the name Gogol for their unborn son because Ashoke, Gogol’s father, believes that the Russian author’s book of short stories helped save his life many years ago. As Gogol grows older, he realizes that his given name subscribes neither to his Indian roots nor to the conventional “Jacobs” or “Michaels” many of his classmates call them-
18 - Dec. 2019/Jan. 2020
Design & Illustration by Galiba Gofur
By Emily Talpey
